Fire Jack Owens

Men's Sports Men's Basketball
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Here’s what those in the basketball world (college basketball coaches and assistant coaches) have told me about Miami.

It would be a great place to coach and can be successful but it needs institutional support. Without institutional support it will fail. What does institutional support look like? recruiting budget, assistant coaching pool, facility improvements and just knowing that the AD and President back you.

Why do they think it can be successful? In order to be successful (I.e. go to the NCAA tournament) you don’t need to beat Xavier, Dayton, Cincinnati, etc…you just have to beat the MAC. The perception is that Miami is the best school in the MAC (education, campus, etc…) and all it is missing is the aforementioned support.

For those arguing that there isn’t the NIL money or we are too close to other successful programs, etc…are losing sight that what Miami needs is to be able to beat the top 2-3 programs in the MAC consistently. If you do that, then you win the MAC. Win the MAC and advance.

2 things come to mind:

  1. Bob Huggins after Cincinnati left CUSA to go to the Big East. “F*#k, its going to be tougher to get to the NCAA”. He knew he could consistently win CUSA or be in the top-3 and go. He knew it would be a real dog fight to get into the top-5 or 6 in the Big East.

  2. Former Marquette Coach Al McGuire said that if he ever wanted to build a college from scratch, the place he would start would be to build out the basketball team. He said, I just need a few really good players and I’ll be successful and with that success will come notoriety and fame and money and we could build a terrific college around that.

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Thank you for constructively contributing to a solution.

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They OWN the market between Logan and Pomeroy, including the hot bed for college basketball recruiting known as Nelsonville.

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Sounds like McGuire created the Gonzaga model.

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As if dropping basketball for women’s hockey was a positive contribution hahahahha

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Nick:
I also recall McGuire saying that his “secret” was to make sure to recruit one stud into his program each year.
By so doing, two things would happen:

  1. in 2-4 years, you’d have a few or several great players and, with good coaching, which Al could do, he’d have built himself a powerhouse.
  2. good players want to get better and studs can attract others who have good talent, though perhaps falling short of “stud” category. These decently-talented players are needed in practice and to take key backup roles on teams and, if a stud goes down with an injury, you’ll at least have a player who has developed to the point where he can be a very acceptable fill-in.

Last point: Institutional support. The President and AD need to make public statements regarding their goal for BB…and by making a public statement, they have to go big and lay it on the line; otherwise all we’ll have is an occasional statement from the AD that we have a commitment to men’s BB, or something like that…which is not a challenging enough statement issued in a big way.
If you’re a leader, you have to be bold, be big…or go away.

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renmanaz…absolutely correct. The last public statement by our AD was, March 10, 2017, just before the Jack Owens hire where he stated: “With the support of Miami’s board of trustees and the president, we are making a commitment to Miami basketball,” said Sayler. “For years Miami basketball was the preeminent leader of the Mid-American Conference and we plan to take all necessary steps to make that happen once more.”

I don’t believe Miami’s president has ever made any public statement regarding his commitment to Millett/MBB/WB/VB

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A new facility or renovated facility is what is needed. However, for over 15 years I’ve been advocating that IN THE MEANTIME, there is a fix to Millett Hall that is relatively inexpensive. However, before I share, there is one thing that Millett Hall really lacks…

…a dedicated student section. (Don’t give me those small bleachers behind the basket).

I believe that Miami may be the only place in America where there is no dedicated student section. By starting with a dedicated student section, it provides a place for students to combine and participate in a group. The energy starts with the students.

next…you have to look at what the students want. They want a place to be a united group. At Miami, the students want to party. The reason hockey became a student hang out was because of (1) student section and (2) a place to start (or continue) the Weekend party. As such…no more noon or 3:30PM Saturday starts. Begin every game at 7PM.

Finally, you have to generate revenue and provide A corporate option and/or better options for ticket holders. Create a dedicated R&W Club for pregame meals, pre game chalk talk, halftime snacks and alcohol. (see below)

you have to create a better Millett without breaking the bank while the funds are put together for a redo. How?

  1. Move the court to the closed end
  2. Create the student section and band in that closed end;
  3. Create the R&W Club Area behind the black curtain in the open end. Tie this in for court-side seat holders, and those that are in designated “club” seats that provide access with an additional surcharge or additional contribution to the basketball excellence fund

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Outstanding low-cost suggestions for changing the culture by rearranging the arena. I think the next step is to bring in a few more interesting opponents.

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The problem is the fact that these ideas and suggestions have been brought up for years and continue to be ignored.

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…yep.

Cost to move the court. Cost to move the scoreboard. Cost to move the lighting. Cost to change the seating chart

The curtain is already there

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Basketball is never going to be eliminated. To even suggest it seems to be out of touch with reality. Colleges with 300 students have basketball programs. Why? Because every college has a gym and you only need a handful of students to field a team. It is the easiest sport for a school to recruit because every HS also has a basketball team. It is also the easiest program to have success in because one or two players can have an enormous impact. That is not true of hockey, football and a bunch of other sports.

You are correct that something has to give. My view is that hockey is the most vulnerable. It makes no strategic sense that Miami added the sport to begin with. NONE. There is no local recruiting base etc. There are no other area colleges that play the sport. There are only two schools in Ohio-BG and OSU and two in the MAC-BG and WMU that field teams.

Granted, we have made a major capital investment in Goggin. However, could the main rink area be converted into a downsized basketball arena and the secondary rink used for club and recreational uses? That would be the best financial decision in an era of diminished resources.

I give you credit for thinking outside the box. That is necessary when Miami has boxed itself in with some poor strategic decisions

I addressed this same topic a month ago in another reply to what had happened to the basketball program. My post from that time follows for additional context.

All of your points are spot on.

What is unfathomable is that Miami’s university and athletic administration has allowed it to occur.

It is similar to companies with a great brand name who let the world pass them by (e.g Kodak) in not evolving as necessary.

The worse strategic error was adding hockey as an intercollegiate sport. Kudos to the coaches that made something of the program over the years but Miami had no reason to spend money on that sport when it was started. No natural recruiting base etc.

At some point a decision is undoubtedly going to have to be made between retaining hockey and sacrificing other sports. Miami simply does not have the financial resources to fund as many major sports as we do.

If Berenson cannot turn the hockey program around it is going to be easier to eliminate it. Basketball is never going to be eliminated. How can the Cradle of Coaches eliminate football? It would be hard to imagine that the Miami brand would not be tarnished significantly with a move to FCS. Are we going to eliminate baseball or track before hockey? We need at least six men’s sports to remain D1.

A Group of Five class demotion of some type may be in the future but we will not control that conversation. It is also unlikely it would even save us any money. If that occurs it would just mean the Power Five would take more of the money.

It is what it is. The college athletic landscape has changed a lot over the last 20 years. We have not helped ourselves by digging a big hole in the middle of all of it.

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I am going to have to disagree with this post. Look I really dont care that much about Miami hockey- I have never seen a game in the new Goggin

But Miami built something special that our students enjoyed and we actually had capacity crowds. So I think it was valuable to the university. The death of hockey was replacing Ohio State with Denver and Michigan with North Dakota.

In my opinion Whether we had hockey or not wasnt going to change the factors that made us irrelevant in basketball. We had hockey in the 1990s and had great hoops

I am not sure a new arena will matter either. The newest arenas in the league are at BG and EMU and their basketball is worse than before they built them

If you want to argue that we need more money dedicated to basketball great I agree. But I would rather have Jeff Boals and are exact same situation then John Cooper and Ohio’s arena and budget. Maybe we need more money to get the next Jeff Boals

Look- the days of competing with Xavier are gone. They were a mid-major when I was in school- now that are a p6 for hoops

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It’s nice to hear one of our group who is not a hockey fan say something positive about the program and acknowledge what if has meant to our student body. It’s pretty apparent what’s left of a Miami fan base is far more invested in football and basketball than any other sport. The student body seems to like hockey a lot. In general, folks who never cared for hockey are obviously the most critical of our program. So thanks.

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You hit it on the head. “The death of hockey” came when the CCHA disbanded.

How is hockey and basketball product much different these days? Neither school hosts ‘brand-name’ opponents for reasons known, both teams have been miserable for the better half of a decade (hockey has a worse win percentage than basketball over the last 5 years), and I’m not sure the student body actually shows up for hockey much anymore.

The only real difference is the venue in which each sport is played.

Hockey USED TO add value to the school. Now, I’m not so sure, and according to some in the athletic department, the sport is a ‘money pit.’

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It certainly did hurt. And don’t forget Notre Dame and Michigan State.

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Exactly…I don’t follow hockey much anymore…so I stay out of it but my one post in a long while in hockey thread was…did move to current conference (i.e., “Hockey Schools”) kill our ability to compete…answer seems to be yes…it was much better when we had the Big 11 opponents and mix of the MAC…CCHA was fun.

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This is correct. @Nickskin pointed out how the time, attention, and focus of the key members of the ICA didn’t involve basketball at all. Miami built a culture around hockey, with financial support being one piece of that puzzle. In essence, ICA has been ignoring basketball implicitly and explicitly for a quarter of a century. No amount of money will help if the people in charge simply do not care.

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This is just my opinion with no facts to back it up, but hockey is not the cause of basketball’s descent, indifference is. We can support each sport and others but not without someone being an advocate for excellence in each sport. Let’s face it, we are a minority clamoring for big changes or even small changes. Our basketball coaching is suspect at best for men and women. Certainly a new or upgraded facility would not hurt, but as someone else said, BG has a great arena and they are not much better than we are. Demand excellence in coaching, win some damn games in MBB, WBB and hockey and we will be OK.

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Given financial realities, see no reason why updating interior of Millett wouldn’t be the way to go…we used to have some excellent posters with engineering backgrounds (KC Redskin as I recall, etc.), who could give us a reality check on what needed to be done and the cost. Millett has those large concourse a and the court coupe perhaps be raised up or down to allow the seating to come closer. Needs a lot more lighting to sell more like an arena. As I recall, dropping the floor may not be feasible with the practice floor underneath (which I got to play on a few times during Miami basketball camps). Any engineerss here?? ?